Our signature event format

Collision

Collision event is the signature workshop format designed by SCImPULSE at its first year of existence, and later honed. It is a multi-day event composed by three moments

1. The pledge

Each day starts off with thematic mini-seminars, whose purpose is to propose the participants a challenge to build a shared language. The pledge is repeated daily, requesting the participants to stand up and share their relevant knowledge, and uncertainty, and a moderator invites contradictory and doubts.

Divergence is a resource.

2. The turn

Co-design and design-thinking sessions, facilitated by simulation and serious playing methods (e.g. LEGO Serious Playing). The turn aims at breaking down hierarchies and fostering the emergence of visions and ideologies, touching in subsequent rounds the full width of the purposes of the covenants, as the participants refine their scientific/business weltanschauung.

CC BY-SA 3.0 from Simon Wardley

3. The prestige

Towards the conclusion of each day, and for the duration of the last one, the group devotes to reflection and evaluation activities. At the beginning of the process, the prestige offers clinics, one-on-one encounters with SCImPULSE selected domain experts, who engage in maieutic conversations with the participants, challenging and provoking them. Towards the maturity of the collision the prestige turns to mapping exercises (Wardley maps, Cynefin, ...), to raise the participant situational awareness and prepare the needed intelligence to build a new strategy.

The name Collision hints at the event from which everything starts in chemical reactions, in nuclear reactions, and in high-energy physics: the collision is at the turning point of transformation and discovery. However, looking beyond the suggestions, the format was thus christened as a tribute to the wisdom overheard again and again at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) that research happens in the cafeteria, which scientists pronounce not to diminish the enormous achievements of the human endeavor they are part of, but to signify the deep epistemological importance of interdisciplinary chance encounters and serendipity.